Shure UK’s Pro Audio Team has been striving to maintain business continuity and increase industry support amid the coronavirus crisis whilst protecting the health and safety of all their associates. The company has been responding and adapting to help support its industry, freelancers and fans.
Virtual Learning – The Shure Audio Institute has built up quite a reputation for their education platform, providing workshops for Shure customers including system integrators, consultants, music industry retailers, engineers, and musicians. In order to continue delivering education to the audio community, Shure have adapted their usual face-to-face workshops to online virtual masterclasses which are broken down in to one-hour sessions hosted by David Phillips, Senior Sales Manager, Shure UK.
The virtual sessions, which started earlier last month, are designed to deliver the essential elements of the usual full day workshops over the course of a couple of hours and once the online course is complete, attendees are invited to complete an online certification test. The online training is industry recognised and completely free-of-charge and therefore, a great way to stay up to date with practises whilst people are spending more time at home. David Phillips commented: “We’re used to running these sessions face-to-face, so it’s been quite a change presenting virtual training.
To make an entire day of training manageable, we’ve broken the training down into easily consumed one-hour sessions. I’ve been really encouraged by the response we’ve received from the attendees, many of whom are good friends and clients of ours from the industry. During this difficult time, it’s been great to help support the industry in any small way we can. The response was so positive, we’ll likely continue running more virtual sessions once government lockdown measures are eased.” New sessions are released regularly and can be found at the following link: https://p.shure.com/wirelessmasterclassvirtual https://p.shure.com/wwb-masterclass-virtual
Well-being Content – The industry we all know, and love, has been forced to shut down and the adaptations we are making to our daily lives can have an effect on our mental health. Shure teamed up with sound engineer, Zoe Milton, to give her own personal experience on how she, as a freelancer, has been adapting to working from home under the recent lockdown measures to help advise and comfort others who find themselves in a similar situation. The full article can be found here: https://www.shure.com/en-GB/performance-production/louder/how-are-you-doing-reflecting-on-mental-well-being-during-shut-down
Fuelling Creativity – The current situation has found many of us turning our hands to be more creative, to find ways around the constraints that we are facing in our work – and in our everyday life. Whilst everyone is spending much more time at home, many of us are consuming content as a means to stay connected and entertained and to spend our time doing those things that we always had to put to one side. The world has seen a rise in people creating podcasts and recording music at home and Shure have been supporting projects such as “The Remote Read” – an innovative series of live streamed virtual play readings. Shure is assisting the team with equipment and advise on overcoming sound technology challenges of virtual productions. More information on “The Remote Read” is available here: www.theremoteread.com
Stuart Moots, Director, Pro Audio, explained: “During a time of such change for our industry, it was crucial we kept ‘business as usual’ as much as possible. In doing so, we wanted to support the industry that has given us so much over the years. We’ve seen a huge uplift in demand for training over this time as furloughed or self-employed creative industry professionals seeks to use this downtime productively. Parallel to all this, supporting our friends in their own lockdown endeavours is another area where we’ve been able to help out. This includes our support of ‘The Remote Read’ by providing USB-microphones to help deliver the best possible production values under the circumstances. When you see how positively our industry has reacted to very sudden, dramatic changes in our day-to-day lives, it gives you cause for optimism for the future.”
Moots added: “I’d also like to draw your attention to the Music Venue’s Trust Campaign ‘To Save Our Venues’, it goes without saying that without those venues providing a platform for emerging artists and bands across the country then the landscape would be very different. These venues are of vital importance not only to the industry, but to the local communities across the UK. Anything we can do to help now will benefit us all in the future.
